


the ripples of us

by betoning



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Declarations Of Love, M/M, Sexual Content, an awful lot of talk about oceans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 16:21:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7322263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betoning/pseuds/betoning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sebastian has thought too much of the phrase 'I'm in love with you'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ripples of us

**Author's Note:**

> This is fiction, please don't read if you'll mistake it for anything else. I mean no harm.

Drinking doesn’t help him forget. It turns the world soft around the edges, smooth to stumble around in, but doesn’t wear away at everything that is sharp within him. It blows up a storm in his veins and makes him feel like a ship about to tip over and sink, and he knows that the wreckage of emotions he’ll become won’t be pretty, so he stops. Asks for a glass of water when it’s his turn to get the next round, and barely secures the drinks on the table before he’s mumbling out noises that don’t excuse his disappearance at all.

New York is getting warm, and the directions someone gives him lead him right into it, into midnight air and distant sounds from the life that goes on on the other side of the building, along the street that spans out from the bar’s entrance. He stands among discarded cigarettes and stacks of boxes worth of empty bottles, and the world’s still swaying. His feet are round beneath him, moving along with the rush of his emotions.

“Hey, man,” Mackie hums. “Sebastian.”

The Falcon wouldn’t be the same in the hands of a different actor. Wouldn’t be as kind, as genuine, with so much affection hidden in those snarky remarks. Sebastian is so grateful to know him, to have him, here, supportive as if Sebastian’s inner turmoil is as bad as a superhero war.

“It’s not that serious,” he hears himself muttering, failing any attempt to sound casual. “Don’t have to Sebastian me. What happened to the nicknames?”

“Chris was like them gnus in _The Lion King_ in there, man, a second away from stomping all over Hayley just to follow you out,” Mackie huffs, knocking his shoulder to Sebastian’s. “That’s kinda serious.”

“It’s nothing,” Sebastian decides, eyeing the cigarettes and patting his pockets for a pack that won’t be there. “Good reference, though. He’d enjoy it.”

He doesn’t imagine it, what Chris must have looked like behind his back. The scrambling for leverage to ease himself out of the booth, or the puppy eyes he must have traced Sebastian’s movements with, as if he’s responsible for everything between pain and redemption, whether he’s involved or not.

 _Not_ , in this case, because he never promised Sebastian a thing.

“He wouldn’t. Not after I beat him to you just now,” Mackie argues. He knocks their shoulders together again, even though the bricks against his back must scratch through his t-shirt. It’s playful. Companionable. “He’s gonna brood about it for days, in that silent, self-composed way of his.”

Sebastian doesn’t advise him to kiss Chris’ nose to make him laugh. It’s a secret he’ll be carrying close to his skin, probably for decades to come. Something to remember when none of this matters anymore, when he’s hit the bottom of the sea and tried desperately to find someone to restore him to former glory again. It will be a hole in his lung that will always let water in to get the emotions moving again.

“I need an iceberg,” he concludes.

Mackie coughs. “The lettuce?”

“The metaphor,” Sebastian corrects. “Every boat-related metaphor needs an iceberg.”

“Uh-huh,” Mackie says, with feeling. The Falcon all the way through. “You’re the boat?”

“The little one,” Sebastian confirms, fingering the bricks, the solid support behind them. “The one you need oars for. I’m about to tip over. Big waves.”

He feels sick with it, with the emotions that crash against the walls of his chest, and with the alcohol that has done nothing but enlarge them, made them more dangerous to sway along with.

“Nah, you’re fine,” Mackie tells him, firm. Unwilling to get thrown up upon. “You know how to swim, right? You can swim away from him.”

Sebastian knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Mackie is humouring him. Giving him what he wants to hear and obeying the alcohol that is making him desperate. Mackie is kind, genuine, The Falcon. Won’t pick sides or turn anyone into a villain. Won’t look at the heart on Sebastian’s sleeve and taunt its irregular rhythm.

“I’m gonna go home,” he says into Mackie’s shoulder. “Safer water.”

“No icebergs,” Mackie says understandingly, then adds, “just, remember that he doesn’t mean to be in the way, yeah? He’d move if he knew you were about to crash.”

*

He’s drunk, but he’s not surprised when he finds Chris waiting for him outside of the door to his apartment, blue eyes brimming with worry. He figures that they must have been that way since he threw a hasty goodbye to the table fifteen minutes ago, breathless and heartsick, swaying as he hurried out of the bar and left the explaining to Mackie.

“I have a key, up on the doorframe,” he reveals, because it’s a better greeting than any of the sharp emotions that are threatening to cut up his throat. He has to get up on his toes to reach it, letting his fingers fumble along the edge while his body soaks up the heat of Chris’ body a few inches from his own, inviting, capable of damage. “Here, see?”

Chris is still worried, blinking slowly over caring eyes. “You have a neighbour, too. Adorable.”

Shelly is five and has already broken Sebastian’s heart three times. Her dad has assured him that everyone falls for her; that it’s good practice for when Sebastian has kids of his own, which is just as heartbreaking every time he hears it, because he can’t be sure of that. Of kids. Not with that hole in his lung that threatens to drag him down every time he breathes.

He puts the key back, because Chris doesn’t want it. Opens up with his own and turns his back on Chris’ voice, the home he associates with it, as he steps into his real one.

“She was half asleep when her dad guided her out of the elevator and walked past, but she still managed to tell me not to hurt her Bucky, or else I’d have her to deal with,” Chris is saying, closing the door behind them as if he belongs here. “Fucking adorable.”

“Yeah, I,” Sebastian starts, stops, brushes his hair back in place behind his ear, stumbling. “I kind of told her she’s allowed to think whatever she wants. That no one can take her thoughts away from her.”

Chris is smiling when Sebastian finally turns to look at him again, all soft and precious. Bright like he hasn’t been since Sebastian started to shy away from him two drinks into the night.

“What does she think?”

Sebastian’s afraid to kick his shoes off, to lose his balance to the waves.

“That I’m in love with Captain America,” he confesses. “Because I dragged him out of the water. What else was I supposed to tell her?”

“Nothing,” Chris says. He’s curling fingers at Sebastian’s hip, calming the waves with a single touch, though he’s still the iceberg. Still right there, looming. “Let her believe.”

He squeezes Sebastian’s hip before he lets go. Presses reassuring fingers into fabric, against bone, and he’s halfway to the kitchen before Sebastian’s blinked himself out of the lingering touch, the pulse point of longing where the ocean kicks back to life again.

Chris hands him a glass of water, then brushes a hand along his side in a soft urge to drink it all, to take care of himself, to stay safe. He’s sharper than the rest of the world, contending with Sebastian’s insides because he’s just as painful to breathe through. There, unrelenting, showing overwhelming care because he doesn’t realize that he’s making it worse. Making it easier for _Sebastian_ to make it worse, to fall harder and tip over.

“It’s not fair, though, to say,” he argues, glaring at the bottom of the glass, at the lingering moisture that is clinging to safety. “Of me, as Bucky, to say. That I’m in love with Captain America.”

Chris’ hand is fitted to Sebastian’s cheek, now. Big, warm, keeping him steady where it’s centering them in the moment, in the rant Sebastian is forcing out that doesn’t seem to register in Chris’ mind, even though he asks, “Why not? I, as Cap, would probably be flattered.”

He has barely gotten his thumb away from the corner of Sebastian’s mouth before he’s covering it with his lips, and Sebastian fumbles in the kiss, on his feet, with his hands scared and desperate in the fabric of Chris’ shirt. The kiss is slow, deliberate, collaborating with the alcohol in the sense that everything but Sebastian’s unrelenting emotions goes blurry again.

His insides hurt, though. Have swallowed too much salt-water and not enough air, and they make him angry. It flares in his chest, small but persistent until he acts on it, pushes Chris away far enough to look at him, at those infuriatingly beautiful features.

“That’s the _point_ ,” he huffs, flexing fingers in fabric once more, looking for stability. “It’s not a statement to be flattered by, it’s an assumption that you feel the same way, that you’re in love _with_ me. I shouldn’t have let her think that we’re the happy kind of couple that can say that.”

Chris looks at him, long and searching while his thumb rubs comfort into Sebastian’s cheek.

“Seb,” he murmurs, concerned once again, even though his eyes have glazed over with a familiar dust of happiness from the kiss. “Did I – is everything okay?”

Sebastian tips forward, over, and drowns in the heat he finds upon Chris’ lips, contradicting the iceberg metaphor but tearing Sebastian open all the same. His chest is solid under Sebastian’s fingertips, shifting muscle and inviting breadth for Sebastian to lean into as he deepens the kiss.

A part of him is guilty to be taking advantage of Chris’ trust like this – to act like he’s not a mess inside and let Chris believe that they are okay because he’s so used to Sebastian’s honesty. A different part of him just takes what it can while he has it – chases Chris’ lips and licks into his mouth to commit the taste of him to memory, because it’s always been casual between them. Has always happened with the threat of a clean break hanging over them, and he’s scared that they’ve reached that point, now. That their break between the movies will be too big, their interests too different, his emotions too deep. To think that he’d get it all would be foolish, so he keeps kissing. Keeps drowning in overlapping waves.

His bed is unmade and there are clothes spread all over the floor to spell out how nervous he was this evening, how badly he wanted to look good for Chris even though there’d be a whole group of friends in the restaurant they started at. Chris doesn’t seem to notice; too busy unbuttoning Sebastian’s shirt while they shuffle through the exploded wardrobe.

“Can’t believe I’m going back in the morning,” he’s saying, breathless, trailing his lips along Sebastian’s jaw. “I missed you so much – can’t believe we don’t get to –”

Sebastian tilts his chin down, catches Chris’ lips just to shut him up before he says something that makes Sebastian cry with want, with the persistent twinge of longing that isn’t soothed by something as fleeting as tonight. He pulls Chris’ sweater over his head before he lets his own slip off of his shoulders, settling in the mess on the floor. Then he’s tugged back in against that endless expanse of skin, warm and compassing where it presses to his own front.

Home, though only borrowed for a night.

Chris gets him flat on the mattress and straddles his thighs; weighs Sebastian down just the way he likes it. It takes effort to keep his eyes open, to meet the affection in Chris’ eyes and accept how it feels where Chris presses the same emotion over his stomach, sides, pecks. His fingers are tracing the lines of muscle all along Sebastian’s torso, teasing shivers out of him as they go, and Sebastian just braces his fingertips against Chris’ jeans to make sure that the entire bed won’t tip over, next.

“ _Fuck_ , look at you,” Chris breathes out, reverent. He brushes a thumb over Sebastian’s left nipple, gives a breathless laugh at the gasp it elicits. “Feel like I haven’t seen you in ages. Like you didn’t want me to see you at dinner, in the bar.”

Something rips out of Sebastian, soft but high-pitched, leaving a tremble in its wake that Chris somehow manages to kiss away, sure, as if there’s nothing he knows better than how to settle Sebastian into his own skin.

His fingers expertly work Sebastian’s jeans open, and a moment later the delicious weight on top of him is gone, ascending down his legs and peeling pants and boxers with it while Chris’ gaze remains upon his skin, hungry.

Sebastian feels hot all over, thrumming with a rush of want that makes everything else within him give way. He’s anchored, here, with Chris’ hands on his knees. Kept floating with the kiss Chris presses to the inside of his thigh and the palms that run all the way up to his hips, bracketing them. Making him aware of how narrow they are, how much smaller he is, now, without the excessive Bucky Barnes muscle.

The touches are languid, as deliberate as the kisses and doing just as much to remind Sebastian of how hard he already is; how close he is to falling apart. He doesn’t know how to part from this, from Chris’ skin against his own, Chris’ noises against his lips, both of their breaths mingled in their strained melody. He doesn’t know how to say goodbye to any of it, so he clings. Lets his hand curl around the back of Chris’ neck and tug him down, hold him in place while he chokes out noises at the feeling of Chris’ hand around him.

“Chris,” he hears himself hum, distant through ragged breathing. Looking up is even harder, now; the visual of Chris’ flushed cheeks above him too beautiful to take in. “I won’t last. I won’t – please.”

Chris hesitates for a moment – carefully takes in every inch of Sebastian’s face before he kisses the corner of his mouth, nodding. “Yeah. _Yeah_ , okay. Just want to touch you, all of you, while I can.”

It’s too similar to what Sebastian _wants_ to hear – too much of a dream for him to hold on to, so he shifts his focus, and trails his fingers from Chris’ neck to his waist, appreciative of every familiar swell of muscle along the way. He loves all of it; muscle and skin and the smile that tops it off. The care in those eyes and the touches that enhance it. His emotions would be crazy not to crash against the beaches inside his chest at the sight of this man.

Chris is careful when he opens Sebastian up, always gentle as he eases that first finger inside, muttering soft encouragements that make Sebastian tremble with how fast he flushes from head to toe. There is a constant brush of Chris’ thumb over his hipbone, an endless queue of breaths getting caught in his throat as Chris scissors his fingers, and then a desperate noise as Chris slips them out.

He loses all breath when Chris bottoms out, caught by the sea, by the raging emotions, but mostly by the man that they are tied to. He’s safer here, in the span of Chris’ arms and against the mattress, than anywhere else in the world, and for a moment there’s nothing else. Nothing in his consciousness but emotion and scent and the heat of Chris’ body all along his. Then he rolls his hips, feels Chris’ shift inside of him to remind him that there’s more. The two of them and everything they can do together, and the noise that spills out of him must mean something, because Chris understands it well enough to move, and it’s _everything_. Always better than the last time, because nothing is better than now, here, this. The delicious snap of Chris’ hips and the size of him that fills Sebastian up so perfectly.

“Oh, fuck – _yes_ ,” he manages to say, caught between a breath and a gasp, his fingers at home in Chris’ hair, on Chris’ neck, slipping to his shoulders. “Please, yes.”

Chris leans down to kiss him, open-mouthed and filthy, panting out amusement against bitten lips, “I love it when you forget how words work.”

Sebastian kisses him again, just to keep himself from saying exactly what it is that he loves about Chris. How much of it there is, how deeply the feeling runs in his veins. He mouths a sloppy path along Chris’ jawline, over beard and down to the smooth expanse of his collarbone, breathing out curse words to the imprints he leaves there.

Too much. It’s _too much_ , yet he knows that he’ll never get enough of it, of Chris. Of them.

He comes with Chris’ name on his tongue, untouched, leaving a torn look of pride and lust on Chris’ face that crumbles under the kiss Sebastian presses to his lips. There’s just enough teeth to urge him on, just enough of an echoing whisper of Chris’ name to get him to come, too, grunting profanities against Sebastian’s throat.

His weight is welcome on top of Sebastian, solid and familiar and everything Sebastian wants; effectively breaking the metaphorical wood he’s built of. He’s splinters floating on the ocean of emotions, stirred. And Chris is the realest thing he knows.

*

Chris uncurled himself gently in the morning; padded around Sebastian’s bedroom softly, and didn’t sing in the shower. There was a trailing scent of Sebastian’s shampoo wherever he went, a rustle of clothes and the odd curse word hissed under his breath, all while Sebastian forced his mouth to stay shut. To keep the pleas from slipping out, the _don’t go, stay, I love you_ that shook his bones and made him want to reach out and drag Chris back to bed.

He didn’t respond to the whispered _Seb_ that left Chris’ lips before he left, or the press of those same lips against his own temple. Couldn't do much but fight the burn beneath closed lids and hate the sound of the front door when it closed around him, around the silence.

Now he’s found a glass of water on his nightstand, painkillers at its side and a note underneath them telling Sebastian that he will be missed, only in a nicer sentence. It brings another unrelenting sting to his eyes and he ends up splashing more water on his face in the bathroom than he drinks from the glass. Then he goes back to bed, worn, sad, longing, until noise finds its way back into the apartment an hour later.

“ _You_ are in love with me,” Chris says, back in Sebastian’s bedroom, wearing realization and Sebastian’s clothes. “Not you as Bucky.”

Sebastian, still worn and sad, tells him, “You’re missing your flight.”

“There are other flights,” Chris waves him off, spare key in hand. “You’re in love with _me_. Not me as Cap.”

“ _Stop_ ,” Sebastian manages, broken, tearing the plea from the back of his throat.

“You’re in love _with_ me.”

“Stop. Chris, _please_ ,” Sebastian whimpers, sinking. “Please, you’re not this cruel.”

“I’m not, _Seb_ , that’s not – I’m with you. Here. In love,” Chris rushes out. He’s looking at the bed, at Sebastian, as if it’s the home he was heading for all along. “You think you’re alone, but I’m in love _with_ you. I love you.”

He’s less iceberg, more life jacket, entirely beautiful, and he’s beaming by the time realization dawns in a similar fashion on Sebastian’s features. Is crawling up the length of Sebastian’s body on the bed with rapid speed and love across his features as soon as the burning in Sebastian’s eyes becomes too hard to fight. And then he kisses Sebastian until the entire world is still, finally.

 


End file.
